


leaving all my yesterdays

by Medie



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Background Slash, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're chasing after something for which the term monster is applicable and they're packing co-ordinates and gasoline. She is <i>definitely</i> going to get them killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leaving all my yesterdays

1.

The thing that kills Caleb is teeth, claws, and something people like Jeannie have no name for.

Rationally, it belongs to the realm of fantasy and myth. Looking back, Jeannie decides to believe that's why they hesitated a second too long. There's nothing to explain the shadow that looms over them, claws slashing out to grab Caleb and drag him away.

Jeannie stays where she fell, on her stomach in the mud, and listens as his screams, hoarse and desperate, fade into the cool night air. Shaking, she hides her face against her arm and waits.

Caleb doesn't come back.

2.

They find what's left the next morning, just after dawn.

"An animal attack," the police say, insisting there's no other explanation for the claw marks that decorate the remains. The medical examiner agrees, pointing out examples on photographs when Jeannie insists on seeing him. She sits on the metal chair, looking across the table at the bespectacled man with a thinly veiled expression of disdain. Beneath the table, she clenches her fists to keep from throwing herself across the table. When she closes her eyes, she sees the flash of claws and remembers the feeling when it had dragged Caleb away.

Satisfaction; it had been pleased with itself.

"It was not an animal attack," she maintains, voice rough.

"It had to be," says the examiner with a cluck of his tongue. "Bear, most likely. Strange for one to be in the area, but with all the expansion lately, I suppose it was inevitable."

She considers arguing, but the detective sitting with her pats her shoulder. "You're upset, Doctor Miller," he murmurs. "It's understandable to be confused about what you saw."

Jeannie turns to look at him with an expression that's more grimace than smile. "I'm not confused," she says. "I know what I saw." It was no animal. She doesn't say as much, but she knows they hear the implication when the detective and the ME give each other a look that screams_ poor woman. _

She leaves them to their insipid sympathies, knowing she'll face the same at home. Along with the landslide of tuna casseroles and potato salads, Jeannie has faced endless sympathetic comments from friends and family alike. They mean well, she knows that, but it doesn't make it any easier to hear anymore than it makes it true.

Sitting in her living room, pouring tea for the others, she listens to the comments about Caleb leaving her and the baby at such an awful time and she smiles bitterly. "When exactly is there a _right_ time?"

Her neighbor blushes and says something about misspeaking, but Jeannie stops listening. They have nothing to say worth hearing.

3.

There's frost on the ground the day she finally buries Caleb. The edge of winter rides the breeze from the river, carrying a promise of snow along for the ride. She stands at the graveside, rocking Madison in her arms, as she listens to the priest's benediction. She pays little attention to it, or the latest round of sympathetic comments from mourners as they file past her, all eager to return to the warmth of their cars.

She doesn't move, beyond cuddling Madison closer to the warmth of her jacket. Caleb hated the winter, part of the reason he'd wanted to move. Jeannie turns her face into the wind and feels the first sting of freezing rain. She's always loved winter.

It will be easier to find the thing that murdered her husband with snow on the ground. She knows that it doesn't belong in the world of rationality, but even monsters leave tracks and tracks she can follow.

She doesn't tell anyone what she's thinking, knowing at the very least they'll try talking her out of it. At worst, they'll take Madison and she won't let that happen. Not knowing what she knows now. They can pretend what she saw doesn't exist, that it's the ravings of a traumatized woman, but she doesn't have the luxury. The echo of her husband's screams ring in her ears, reminding her why.

Madison falls asleep in the car. It's just as well; Jeannie doesn't want her daughter to see them leave their house behind. They won't be back.

4.

She hasn't seen Rodney in almost a year, since just after Madison was born, but he doesn't look surprised when he opens the door at two a.m. to find her standing there. He's bleary-eyed, she woke him up, but he just nods and steps back to let her in.

John's right there behind him, hair even messier than usual, to take Madison and Madison's diaper bag from her. He gives her a quick, half-hug that feels like the first real affection she's had since that thing stole her husband and she smiles. "Sorry to wake you."

"Hmph," Rodney mumbles, closing the door behind her. "No point now, we're up."

"We were awake anyway," John shrugs. "You know how he is." He tips his head toward the living room, from which Jeannie can see the faint glow of Rodney's laptop.

She nods and tries to smile, "Yeah, I know." Swallowing sudden, unexpected, tears, Jeannie turns her head, looking away from them. John and Caleb had talked more than she and Rodney had – commiserating about their workaholic spouses. She presses a hand against her mouth and turns away.

They wait, Rodney with surprising patience, until she can compose herself with a muttered, "Sorry, I don't know what came over me."

Her brother rolls his eyes. "I would have thought it was the typical reaction for this sort of situation," he says. His tone is typically brusque, typically Rodney, but she can see the worry underneath. "If you're done, I made coffee and _John_ refuses to drink it."

"Philistine," Jeannie says, habit teasing the old joke from her lips.

John smirks, turning away with Madison. "Please, whatever you two call that? It's not coffee – its toxic waste."

Caleb hated her coffee. Jeannie bites back a sob. "Coffee's good."

Rodney nods. "We'll need it."

5.

When he leads her into the living room, she's surprised by the whiteboard decorating one corner.

Caleb and a lot of other faces are taped to it in a circle, red threads leading back to a question mark at the center. Beneath each face is a name and all of them are the names she scribbled down in a notebook in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's in Oshawa.

"You're investigating Caleb's death," says Jeannie.

"Well, of _course_," Rodney blinks. "Isn't that what you're doing here?" He asks, as if surprised anything else would bring her here.

She looks at him. "I thought –" She doesn't know what she thought. Except, possibly, she might have thought she needed help. She looks past Rodney, to the table in the hall where she knows John locks up his gun and badge at night, and hears Caleb's screams. "I thought I needed to talk to you."

"You didn't actually believe that a _bear_ killed him," her brother asks, looking at her like she's some sort of imposter. It's a backward compliment, but for Rodney, it's a glowing one.

"_No_," Jeannie says, taking stock of Rodney's research on the whiteboard. "I'm just surprised that you don't."

"Give me _some_ credit," Rodney says with a touch of offense. "Contrary to what you've always said, I am not a complete idiot." She tries smiling at the hint of fondness in his voice as Rodney holds out his hand. "Show me what you have."

Still perusing the whiteboard, she pulls the notebook – jammed with newspaper clippings and computer printouts – from her bag and passes it to him without looking. She doesn't want him to see the relief in her eyes.

6.

An hour later, John finds them sitting on the couch, bickering over wendigos and werewolves.

7.

When Jeannie and Rodney McKay were very little children, their mother told them stories. She called them fairy tales, but they didn't sound anything like the fairy tales Jeannie read in her books. Hansel and Gretel never went after the witch with a shotgun. Jeannie thought these fairy tales were real, something about the look in her mother's eye said they were.

Jeannie never asked.

Sitting in Rodney's living room, with autopsy reports scattered around her, she looks at her brother. He looks back.

They weren't fairy tales.

8.

Jeannie finds her mother's journals in a dusty box at the back of Rodney's attic. Sitting on the hardwood floor, her jeans covered in dust, she starts to read.

Mom sold Tupperware and she traveled a lot on weekends, sometimes at night for her parties, and Dad always seemed to be nervous. When she was a teenager, Jeannie thought her Mom was having an affair and that Dad suspected.

It wasn't an affair, the journals make that clear. As clear as the fact that her Dad knew what Mom was doing. The stories her Mom told Jeannie and Rodney at night weren't fairy tales.

Moms didn't spend their nights and weekends killing fairy tale monsters and that's exactly what her Mom did. Just like her Mom before her, and her Mom before her.

"Son of a – " The sound of footsteps on the stairs interrupts her and Jeannie looks up into her brother-in-law's face. "I'm Buffy."

John grins. "Cool."

She almost throws the book at him, before she remembers what it is.

"Mer isn't going to believe this."

John grimaces. "Not if you call him that first he won't."

9.

"I remember this," Rodney says, running a reverent hand over one of the journals. "I can remember her writing in it when she came home." He looks at one of the pages, a diagram of a ritual marking, and shakes his head. "She told me it was recipes."

John leans over his shoulder and grins, "Well, if it is, I'm not eating it. Your cooking's bad enough."

"Keep it up and it's the couch for you," says Rodney almost cheerfully, turning another page.

"Yeah, yeah," John demurs, squeezing his shoulder. "Tell it to somebody who doesn't spend their night as your pillow."

As she walks around the room, rocking Madison in her arms, Jeannie does everything but watch her brother and his husband. Every time she does, her throat tightens and tears threaten. "Is there anything in there we can use?" she asks.

"Probably," Rodney looks up. "We're going to need coffee."

Jeannie sighs and stands up, handing Madison off to John as she agrees, "Lots of coffee."

10.

The first snowstorm of the year hits just before dawn, racing into town with all the fury of a hurricane. Jeannie starts awake with the first gust of wind to rattle the windowpanes. Rolling onto her side, she watches the bluster of white as it swirls by the house and smiles.

It's time.

11.

"You two are crazy for doing this," John says, double-knotting Madison's hood beneath her chin. "And I'm even crazier for helping you." He lifts the baby into his arms and follows Jeannie outside.

Jeannie shoves the shotgun into the trunk and looks at him, smiling. "Yes, you are," she agrees. "That's the fun part."

The gasoline goes in next, followed by the flares, and the knives. A dozen other things follow, everything and anything they might need, and Jeannie's heart pounds in her chest as she closes the trunk. It's time.

After Caleb, there were three more attacks. Two of them fatal. It's moving in a direct line and Jeannie knows, this is their shot at it. "No one else dies, John," she says quietly. "Whatever else is out there, this one is finished."

"Oh great," Rodney huffs, his breath forming a cloud of condensation in the air as he lugs a duffle bag out of the house. "I'm killing myself and you two are having the pre-requisite touchy-feely moment?"

"Nope," Jeannie shakes her head. "I'm stealing your husband."

Rodney snorts and drops the bag at their feet. "You'll bring him back," he says. "Twenty-four hours, tops."

"I think I just got insulted," John complains, grinning.

"Hardly," says Rodney with a sniff. "Can we leave now?"

"What?" John bats his eyelashes. "Don't I rate a decent good-bye?"

Rodney looks scandalized. "In front of the _baby_?"

Rolling her eyes again, Jeannie takes Madison and smacks her brother. "It's too cold for full frontal nudity, Mer," she says. "Just kiss him and get on with it, we're burning daylight."

She walks away, giving them some privacy and taking some for herself. She doesn't want them overhearing this. "Be good to Uncle John," she murmurs, kissing her daughter's cool cheek. "And remember, Mommy loves you, okay?"

Looking back, she smiles at the sight of John murmuring something into her brother's ear. "Okay," she amends, "Maybe you can torture Uncle John a _little_."

12.

Jeannie drives; Rodney's totaled three cars in ten years and she doesn't want to add hers to the list. Conversation is sparse, almost staccato, and highly uncharacteristic. They don't even bicker and Jeannie's tempted to start a fight just to end the silence.

Instead, she grips the steering wheel tighter and keeps driving. They drive into the storm, slowing them down, and Jeannie mutters an oath. The snow she'd hoped would highlight their monster's trail is obscuring it.

Halfway there, Rodney pulls out his laptop and starts pecking at keys. "Narrowed a search area," he explains. "Just need to check the co-ordinates."

Inching forward into the storm, Jeannie fights the hysterical urge to laugh. She's going to get them killed. They're chasing after something for which the term monster is applicable and they're packing co-ordinates and gasoline. She is _definitely_ going to get them killed. "We have no idea what we're doing."

"Well, no," Rodney shrugs, "but we know more than the people its killing. If we don't do this, they're not going to."

"No," Jeannie agrees. "We need sleep."

Rodney reaches for the map. "I'll find us something."

"Make it good," she tells him. "If I'm going to die, it's not going to be because I have bedbug bites." Turning on the radio, Jeannie pauses and adds, "Book two rooms - you snore."

13.

Rodney gives her the better room; her brother always did have a healthy sense of self-preservation.

14.

They set out before dawn, armed with loaded shotguns and coffee. Rodney reads aloud from their mother's journal, going over the sole entry he found that sounds like the thing they're hunting.

Jeannie surprises him when she suddenly slams on the breaks, and pulls the car onto the highway's shoulder. "It's here," she says, unable to ignore the sudden cold seizing her spine.

She doesn't have to ask how she knows, realizing it's a leftover from surviving the thing and going with it. Out of the car before Rodney can respond, she leaves him to scramble after her, skidding along the snow-covered hill in the effort to catch up.

"Come on, Mer," she says, stopping at the tree line. "If we're lucky, we'll catch it when it's asleep."

He slips in the snow, nearly losing his grip on his shotgun, cursing as he pushes himself upright again.

"Try not to blow your head off, Mer," she tells him. "That's what we've got that thing for."

He glares at her as they head into the woods. Jeannie smiles and keeps on going. If she doesn't think about it, she won't throw up on her shoes.

15.

The sound of a man screaming for help tells them where to go. For a split second, Jeannie hears Caleb's voice echoed in the sound and she freezes.

With no warning, Rodney stumbles into her back and she snaps out of it in time to catch herself against a tree. "It's not him," her brother tells her.

"It will be if we don't hurry," she says grimly, pushing on.

Whatever answer Rodney has for that, he keeps it to himself.

16.

In the light of day, the creature is as terrifying as it was that night. For just a second, Jeannie looks into its eyes, their gazes connecting for a moment, and her stomach revolts.

It remembers.

It releases the man it's dragging and turns to surge toward her.

Fetid breath reaches her before it does and she retches, the scent of death unmistakable. Instinctively, her free hand covers her mouth and, as she fights the urge to double over, hears her brother scream her name.

The naked terror in Rodney's voice is like cold water to her face, and she stumbles backward, yanking the gun up as she falls.

The force of the gunshot pushes her hard into the snow, and Jeannie ignores the scream of protest her ankle puts up as she scrabbles, pushing herself back to fire again. Over her head, she hears Rodney fire and, using the cover, she pushes herself back up.

Standing at his side, she reaches into the pack on his back, digging around until she comes up with the prize. Mentally sending a thanks up to John's misspent youth, she hurls the Molotov cocktail at the creature.

"Isn't fur a bitch?" she says when it crashes at the creature's feet, flames surging up its legs.

She doesn't wait for a reaction before she's readying another one. It's quick and dirty, but listening to the creature's cry, Jeannie thinks Caleb and her mother would approve.

17.

They don't stop at the motel on the way back, they don't stop anywhere. They keep going until the lights of Rodney's house come into view.

Jeannie mumbles a weary hello at John and lets him steer her in the direction of the guest room. Madison's in her crib, asleep by the bed that Jeannie happily collapses into.

If she's honest with herself, and she doesn't have the energy to lie, she's shocked to still be alive. But she isn't going to complain. She'll leave that to Rodney, though she doubts that he'll be doing much of it either.

Sitting up, she lifts her daughter out of the crib and into bed with her. Madison responds by cuddling closer and tangling one chubby fist in her hair. Her daughter safe in her arms, Jeannie falls asleep.

She'll write her journal entry in the morning.


End file.
